How to Season Your Speech with Salt – Spotlight on WBC: Colossians-Philemon, $9.99 for a Limited Time
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This sale includes Peter T. O'Brien's classic volume on Colossians and Philemon. Read an excerpt from Colossians-Philemon below, and then buy it now to save about 70% off the original price!
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How to Season Your Speech with Salt – From WBC: Colossians-Philemon by Peter T. O'Brien
[Colossians 4:6 "Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." (NIV)]
“Seasoned with salt,” which is the literal rendering of the Greek, is the second characteristic required of the Colossians’ speech.
Their words must not be dull or insipid but should be interesting and judiciously chosen. Salt was used in seasoning food and preserving it from corruption. The latter function may explain the parallel exhortation in Ephesians 4:29, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (NIV).
Those who are the salt of the earth (Matt 5:13; Mark 9:49, 50; Luke 14:34) might be expected to have some savor about their language. This could be taken to mean “witty” since salt had this significance in pagan usage (apparently derived from the pungent power of salt) or “winsome,” so that the Colossians’ speaking was to exercise a wholesome influence in conversation which might otherwise become debased or crude. However, attention has been drawn to rabbinic parallels for a metaphorical use of salt as wisdom… [And] several church fathers, including Origen…took salt in this sense of wisdom; … while in Hellenistic contexts as well as rabbinic ones salt could describe the appropriate word used in speech…
Here Paul’s statement has particular reference to Christians responding with the right word to those who ask questions of the community…perhaps in connection with their beliefs and behavior. So not only must the addressees’ conversation be opportune as regards the time; it must also be appropriate as regards the person…
They are, in the words of Peter, “always [to] be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15).
- Peter T. O'Brien
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FAQs
Q1: What if I don't have one of the software platforms (like Logos), or one of the apps (like Olive Tree) that you list above?
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A3: Yes, at a couple of the vendors. Click on the vendor links above for more info.
Q4: Is every WBC volume on sale?
A4: Every WBC volume that has been released is on sale.
Q5: You mean some WBC volumes haven't been published yet?
A5: Correct—for example, no Acts volumes have been published yet.
Q6: What's new in the WBC series?
A6: Three volumes are new: 2 Corinthians, Second Edition by Ralph P. Martin; and the second editions of Trent C. Butler's Joshua 1-12 and Joshua 13-14. Click the links above for more info on them.
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